Recent talk about a state-owned oil refinery has renewed interest in the origins of North Dakota's original state industries almost 90 years ago.

Next month, the University of North Dakota's history department is hosting a conference on the Nonpartisan League, the farmers' movement that successfully pushed for the founding of the Bank of North Dakota and the state Mill and Elevator in Grand Forks.

"Here we had a state that in some ways was controlled by some outside forces. Many individuals in the state clearly felt they were being treated like second-class citizens," said Kimberly Porter, the chairman of UND's history department, who is organizing the gathering.

"The NPL gives us a positive example that we can make a difference," Porter said. "We, as citizens … can stand up and say, 'No, that's not the way it has to be."'

The conference, which is being held Oct. 9-11, is being pegged as the 90th anniversary of the November election in which League-affiliated Republicans took power in the North Dakota Senate, giving the League control of both the Legislature and the governorship.

Lynn Frazier, a Hoople potato farmer and political newcomer, had been elected governor in 1916, when the League also gained a majority in the North Dakota House.

After League candidates captured the Senate, the 1919 Legislature approved bills establishing the state-owned bank and flour mill, an insurance program to cover hail damage to crops, and other reforms.

Its ideas took hold because farmers believed the existing banking and grain trading system made it more difficult and expensive to obtain credit, and shortchanged the value of their wheat because of deceptive grading practices.

For most of the NPL's history, its candidates ran as Republicans. It merged with North Dakota's Democratic Party in 1956.

Some Democratic legislators and the party's candidate for governor, state Sen. Tim Mathern, D-Fargo, have discussed the idea of a state-owned oil refinery to avoid gasoline and diesel fuel shortages.

Porter said the debate about state ownership of an oil refinery could lend a fresh perspective to the NPL's agenda.

"I thought we needed to celebrate, to explore, to continue a discussion. There are folks who are thinking or talking about the role the bank plays in our economy today. There are folks who think we need a state-owned oil refinery today," she said.

Porter is expecting NPL scholars to present papers on William Langer, a former governor and U.S. senator, and NPL founder A.C. Townley, a one-time flax farmer near Beach in western North Dakota.

A former Socialist Party organizer, Townley began organizing the League in 1915, proposing a system of state ownership of grain elevators, flour mills, meatpacking houses and banks, hail insurance for farmers, and state inspection and grading of grain.

Charles Barber of Mandan, a retired professor and Langer scholar who taught history at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, said he is preparing a paper for the conference about Langer's tenure as North Dakota's attorney general.

Langer was elected attorney general in 1916 as part of a first wave of NPL officeholders but he later feuded with Townley and split from the League.

"In the early years, (Langer) was a totally team player, but he broke away for reasons that I think can be justified as principled rather than as simply opportunistic," said Barber, who has researched Langer's papers from the period at UND.

The NPL reached its zenith quickly.

In 1920, anti-League Republicans recaptured control of the state House. Questions about the operation of North Dakota's new Industrial Commission, which was formed to manage the state-owned industries, and unhappiness about falling prices for wheat and beef helped fuel a 1921 campaign to recall the commission's members - a right the NPL itself had championed.

Frazier and the Industrial Commission's other two members, Attorney General William Lemke and Agriculture Commissioner John Hagan, were thrown out of office, although voters decided to keep the state bank and mill. Frazier was subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate, and Lemke to the U.S. House.